En garde! Wikipedia takes us through the history of dueling
This week’s entry: Duel
What it’s about: Satisfaction, sir! From the Renaissance until the end of the 1800s, upper-class men in Europe (and to a lesser extent, the United States), often settled their difference by dueling. Considered more refined than street brawling or good-old-fashioned murder, a duel was a fight held to a particular set of rules, nearly always with each participant using the same weapon—usually a sword before the mid-1700s, and usually a pistol afterwards. These fights were not necessarily to the death, but the willingness to at least risk death for the sake of honour (which, in this case, tends to mean showing up some other dude who was mean to you) was central to dueling culture.
Strangest fact: The stereotypical notion of challening someone to a duel by slapping them across the face with a glove comes from the medieval practice of “throwing down the gauntlet.” For reasons Wikipedia declines to explain, throwing a glove down before someone was a clearly insulting gesture, and a man of honor was obligated to respond to the insult. When someone was knighted, they were traditionally given three light blows on the shoulder with a sword (the predecessor to the current practice of being tapped with a sword by the Queen), and then slapped in the face—these ceremonial blows were the last insults a man could receive without being obligated to respond. Henceforth, he would be a knight, and would have to uphold his honor in any situation. Throwing a glove or gauntlet was one such insult that a knight (or later, a gentleman) would have to respond to, but slapping with the glove was rarer, and was often a response to the thrown glove—with both parties soundly affronted, a duel would then be inevitable.
Biggest controversy: The most surprising thing about dueling is the lack of controversy attending two men trying to politely murder each other. Dueling has its roots in trial by combat, a Germanic law used to allow a criminal defendant to clear his name by fighting his accuser, with the belief that God would intervene and spare the innocent party. While dueling didn’t exist in the Roman Empire, medieval Europe embraced the practice as a more civilized alternative to trial by ordeal, in which the accused was subjected to a life-threatening ordeal with the idea that God would intervene and spare the innocent. Long after trial by combat had been replaced by more modern legal proceedings, dueling was considered a sensible method of settling disputes, and far from being considered a murderer (or attempted one—many duels ended in mere injury, or with both parties unscathed), the winner would usually see his standing increase. Even politicians’ reputations weren’t harmed by dueling—two sitting British Prime Ministers, Pitt The Younger and the Duke Of Wellington, fought in duels. Abraham Lincoln narrowly avoided a duel while in the Illinois state legislature, when his second and his opponent’s convinced the rivals to call things off. Andrew Jackson fought at least two duels before becoming president, and is rumored to have fought more. In his 1806 duel against Charles Dickinson (an attorney and dualist, not the writer), Jackson let his opponent take the first shot, hoping he would fire quickly and miss, while Jackson himself could then take careful aim. The strategy half-worked, as Jackson shot and killed Dickinson, but not before Dickinson’s quick shot hit Jackson in the chest. The bullet lodged too close to his heart to be removed, and the wound bothered him for the rest of his life.